Der Hauptmann
In the final days of the Third Reich, a young German soldier fighting for survival finds a Nazi captain’s uniform. Impersonating an officer, the man quickly takes on the monstrous identity of the perpetrators he is trying to escape from.
Herold is an enlisted man, a rank-and-file infantryman, but early on he comes across a captain’s uniform while rifling through an abandoned military vehicle. Putting it on, he is transformed. Emboldened, he bluffs and swaggers through increasingly difficult situations. The uniform protects him. Some are suspicious, but the captain manages to outfox everyone. Forming a task force from stragglers he meets along the way, Herold acquires more and more authority and dispenses harsh and arbitrary justice.
With this rambunctious and unsettling portrait of a man who, with mounting bluster, becomes intoxicated by his new-found power, director Robert Schwentke has hit on a pertinent metaphor for much of what bewilders us as we watch politicians rise to power with the flimsiest of credentials.